ANC briefed on plan to turn Eskom around

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Honorary Master

The restructuring of Eskom, including a substantial debt bailout and its break-up into three parts, was put to the ANC lekgotla on Saturday as the first step towards dramatic changes to save the company.

The lekgotla was briefed by a task team of experts established by President Cyril Ramaphosa to guide the government on a way forward for the company.

Eskom is in a deep financial crisis and is unable to pay the interest on its R419bn debt burden out of its revenue.

The power utility is acknowledged as the single biggest risk to the SA economy by the National Treasury, credit ratings agencies and the investment community.

The task team has put forward a package of proposals, which include splitting Eskom into three state-owned companies for generation, transmission and distribution.

It is also recommending a substantial bailout, as well as tariff hikes.

Senior Member

"National executive committee member Siyabonga Cwele said urgent steps were required to deal with the challenge of liquidity of the utility and the government was tasked with exploring viable options to reposition Eskom.
This had to be done in a way that protected jobs."

They are suppose to get rid of the excess staff (Top and middle management)

So basically, we are keeping everyone, and the tax payer need to foot the bill...

Honorary Master

Wonder if they will make sure to check what solar prices are. Banks could even offer possible "solar loans" or mini wind turbine loans for those who can pay monthly but can't do one large capital investment. Risk should also be slightly lower than normal as you could check what the current electricity bill is and base it on that to make sure they can afford it (of course this won't stop defaulters/fraud etc. Just that it's more likely they can adford the repayments).

Expert Member

Wonder if they will make sure to check what solar prices are. Banks could even offer possible "solar loans" or mini wind turbine loans for those who can pay monthly but can't do one large capital investment. Risk should also be slightly lower than normal as you could check what the current electricity bill is and base it on that to make sure they can afford it (of course this won't stop defaulters/fraud etc. Just that it's more likely they can adford the repayments).

CoCT rates are higher than Eskom as far as I am aware? Not exactly sure as I am comparing one Eskom direct for residential and the other CoCT business, don't have a CoCT res bill.
And solar is not cheaper in so far as it depends on your usage?

Would love if there was an up-to-date per kilowatt + installation cost guide. I think there was a 2017 one on the forum at one point that I read that was quite nice/detailed.
But @Jamie McKane seems to be too busy writing hit pieces on credit cards/multi choice adds rather than something useful.

The goal being more transparency in the performance of the 3 main functions of Eskom. So Generation can't hide it's losses behind transmission and vice versa. Similar to what happened at Telkom - split into business units, and now each BU has its own goals and targets. Dodgy coal contracts can be avoided, because Generation now has to be profitable and can't steal from the Eskom balance sheet.

Expert Member

The goal being more transparency in the performance of the 3 main functions of Eskom. So Generation can't hide it's losses behind transmission and vice versa. Similar to what happened at Telkom - split into business units, and now each BU has its own goals and targets. Dodgy coal contracts can be avoided, because Generation now has to be profitable and can't steal from the Eskom balance sheet.

Sure, that would help. But we have lately seen more than enough of the inner workings of SOE's and government departments and how corrupt they are, and there are still no consequences. So more transparency is probably not going to stop it. They need to take a serious stance against corruption and inefficiency otherwise it is all for nothing. At least this could pave the way to sell off one of the divisions in future more easily.

That is an average salary of over R600k a year, over R50k a month. Whilst the newly implemented minimum wage in SA is R4500 a month. How can a company employ 1000 more people in one year while going bankrupt? This is just incompetence on a massive scale.

Expert Member

CoCT rates are higher than Eskom as far as I am aware? Not exactly sure as I am comparing one Eskom direct for residential and the other CoCT business, don't have a CoCT res bill.
And solar is not cheaper in so far as it depends on your usage?

Would love if there was an up-to-date per kilowatt + installation cost guide. I think there was a 2017 one on the forum at one point that I read that was quite nice/detailed.
But @Jamie McKane seems to be too busy writing hit pieces on credit cards/multi choice adds rather than something useful.